Another Life

Juan Davila

 

I wonder if your lips taste of the stars

as they fold in and out of an ether-laden chrysalis.

If I could kiss you, I would kiss you

until our pulses collapsed on top of each other,

until the only shape your supple limbs could compose

was the outline of my body in juxtaposition.

 

I want to fill my dreams with you,

to find your eyes gazing back at me

through a tremulous darkness.

We could make love with our souls out in the open

and our hearts naked as sunlight.

We could make love in the recesses of our psyches

free of affectation, in a place where magic is still magic.

 

If my life were truly my own you would be ubiquitous.

I would sink into your horizon each night.

our auras so concentrated, so unanimous 

in their occupations that our seams would overlap.

 

If only it were as simple as calling your name.

A name which I adore.

A name which I whisper alone in my room

until it lodges in my throat like a heartbeat.

 

It’s true that one can feel a connection 

even in isolation, that they can happen 

upon a face in a crowd and find in it memories 

that have not yet been assigned. 

Perhaps we knew each other in another life.

 

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Someday

It is only in my dreams

that we mean something to each other.

In reality we have never spoken.

I immortalize these words for my own sake,

in the hopes that their weight

will create a gravity sufficient

to draw you closer.

 

Someday I believe that we will meet on a street

where love runs deeper than cobblestones

and you will cross over to me

as often as it takes to be at my side.

Someday must happen soon

for I have drifted too long at sea

and fear that I might have

grown too foreign for domestic use.

 

The sight of you makes my feathers itch.

I pluck them delicately like the strings on a harp

and in their melancholy refrain

you can just hear my heart going off

like fireworks in the distance.

 

I could fashion a constellation

of our silhouettes as they congeal and contort

on the stark canvas of our outermost walls.

We would be spectacular together,

the way art is spectacular

when shaped by a singular instinct.

 

The stars, taken in their totality,

are not sufficient to encapsulate my wish

only your words have the power to shift continents,

whether to draw them near or push them apart.

Perhaps you too are a poet?

Summon me, I will answer.

 

I sit quietly thinking you into being on a bus.

Strangers side by side in rows

embroidered into their virtual lives

and vacant on the outside.

The seat beside me is empty:

it is an extension of myself,

my strangely glorified isolation.

If it were you there beside me

my whole life would be transformed in an instant

and I along with it.

 

My old skin has gotten too tight

and whenever I move my bones knock together.

My womb is deceased but her guile remains intact.

I can’t quite imagine what has taken her place.

It could be that I am filled up like a balloon,

only the air is not air but vestiges of a life

we could have together.

Someday when you have come to love me

I will grow another heart the size of your fist

and that heart will be more than enough to fill me.

Writing Prompt #199 “Special Collage and A World Apart 6″

(This is a little all over the place and very long. There is no real conclusion to this because it just a window into a character.)

On entering Fallow Farce, he had encountered the guardians of Ocanthus. They’d been reluctant to admit him. He who’d created all the particulars necessary for their existence. He was one of them, a Void, but his altered appearance had rendered him incongruous with their assumptions. He was not a God, not exactly, even if history acknowledged him as such. He was a scientist. He was adept at magic, a little too adept for uncomplicated access to the entropic realm that was as much his identity as his home. He had not come to enforce order, merely to shatter his own pretenses. If he wanted to enter Fallow Farce than he had to castrate himself. A restraining device. What a joke. For one such as himself it was trivial to dismantle and yet he wore it now voluntarily. The device did not interfere with his immediate plans. He still had magic, it was just subdued.

–

He experimented heavily on himself, going so far as to irrevocably alter his constituent pieces. He was an aggregate of many races but he belonged now to a race all his own. His thick, silver hair was pulled back into a sloppy, convenient bun. His skin was a luminous, golden beige. His eyes were a disarming sapphire, framed in heavy silver lashes. He had wings, the debased, black, feathered-wings of a fallen angel. His horns were purple and gold. His beauty was astounding, no not astounding, it should have been astounding but he had not made it so. He’d left the scars on his back and the burns on his forearms. He could have erased them but he didn’t want to forget all that he had endured. Endurance was one of his more redeeming qualities.

–

His first specimen just happened to be the guardian who’d collared him. He paid the other male in jink. Such arrangements were unheard of in Fallow Farce but the watcher was planning a vacation to Sigil and money was necessary elsewhere. So far no other volunteers had presented themselves. There were limits to having a single test subject. He’d have to convince others, one of the Dread-Bringers perhaps.

–

He’d lived so long that the designation of an age no longer had any comprehensible meaning. He’d grown cold and detached. His mind was sharper than ever but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d loved someone. Most of his time was spent in isolation. His research had become the outlet for all his impulses. Sometimes he and the guard engaged in a purely esoteric form of intimacy. Their souls bled into each other. Their consciousness mingled. Only his consciousness was closed, inscrutable to his younger, less experienced companion. He on the other hand, knew every thought that flicked through the guard’s head. Brief as fireflies. The other man’s thoughts were nothing like his own thoughts. They were simple, untethered, phaseal. The sentry was, at the very core of his being, virtuous (albeit a bit uncouth in practice). As for his own moral interior how could he judge it? He was a scientist driven by curiosity, by madness, by obsessions. He did not think himself capable of frivolous emotions. Experience was the core of belief.

–

The watcher did not love him, not exactly. He feared him. He desired him to the point of self-destruction. He called their relationship a sickness. That was a suitable enough explanation. As for his own feelings they were not nearly so flattering. The guard was available and robust. If only he could take some of the man’s virtue and vitality and become someone entirely new. Yes he craved the man’s influence. He wanted to be awed again, to be stricken, to be punished by his emotions. He who appeared ageless, desired youth. More aptly he desired naiveté. He too wanted a mind that burned and faltered.

–

He gazed into his empty glass. His throat burned. His thoughts expanded, ever-so-slightly. He did not look around the room. He raised his hand absently, one more drink and he’d head back to the lab. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been home. The last time he’d slept deeply. Dreams offered little reprieve, his thoughts always interjected, superseded, watered his fantasies down to variables. The notion that he could borrow someone else’s dreams occurred to him then. If not for the collar he could’ve scanned the room telepathically. He briefly looked up from his glass. He saw the watcher seated at the bar. Sometimes when he saw the sentry he felt that he was looking at a younger version of himself. They had nothing in common with each other it was just a side-effect of their “activities”. What they were doing was much worse than sex, infinitely more complicated, infinitely more dangerous. Only the guard didn’t fully comprehend the risks or perhaps he simply didn’t want to comprehend them. Either way if they continued their course, the weaker male would be consumed.

–

The watcher turned around and held his glass up as if in silent toast. They had a shared sense of proprioception. He felt everything the guardian felt, at least in a physical sense. A few more sessions and they would share emotions as well. The guard smiled at him crookedly but didn’t get up. They didn’t talk much in public because then it would have become obvious the off-ness of their relationship. They often mirrored each other, though it was only a compulsion not exactly mandatory, not yet. Whenever the sentry smiled he felt his own lips twitch and his muscles ached with unfamiliarity. The guard was all Void. Two meters to his 2.6 meters. Sapphire skin. Dark purple hair, arranged into long dreads. Purple richly decorated horns. Haunting lavender eyes. Strong facial structure. Broad shoulders, Defined musculature. Uncomfortably handsome.

–

It was a shame to ruin him. To dominate him as he knew he would if they ever fully merged. It could not be helped. His will was just too strong. The guardian would remain alive inside of him, a spark, a thrill, a fresh perspective.

–

He had a high tolerance for alcohol and compelling reasons to drink. He was typically entertained by a female Void named Curiosity. She was sarcastic and sullen and altogether too jaded and intelligent to work in such a place. She wasn’t interested in sex or romance. She was popular for her wit and her story-telling. She’d traveled all over the multi-verse, even into the formless realms of creation itself. They did not need to talk for theirs was an understanding beyond friendship. Sometimes they just sat together drinking and watching other people filter in and out of the club. She kept the more enthusiastic hosts from bothering him. She knew the truth of his intentions but said nothing. She would never submit herself to experimentation. She was too smart for that.

–

“Everyone is transparent when you get to be as old as we are…” She sighed and there was a sadness to her voice that only he could conceivably understand.

–

“Have you considered taking nepenthe?” He had considered it himself but it wasn’t really amnesia he sought, it was naivety.

–

“I have…but if you’re successful absorbing that guardian…you’ll need someone to mind you…someone who knows who you are encase you forget…” She said turning back to him, half-serious, half-mocking. She was also lying. She was afraid of taking nepenthe, afraid of trading one ego for another.

–

“I have read them you know…the journals you gave me…” She offered unapologetically. He’d given them to her for safe-keeping encase the experiment with the guard went sideways. The journals were all personal, his scientific journals were in a safe in the lab.

–

“And?” He asked nonplussed. They had no real secrets between. She knew his name. His name which carried the weight of the world with it.

–

“You’re brilliant and you’re terrible…I’m glad you prefer men…” She said laughing, her husky unused laugh gave him a sense of hope. She still had so much feeling left in her after all these years. He felt very little save for the persistent rumble of his libido.

–

“What did you prefer before…you lost your sex drive?” He asked, they never took offense to each other. They spoke with shocking openness. They gave each other unsolicited advice, advice they never imposed.

–

“I don’t think I ever had a preference to be honest. I have only been in love once though…if you can believe it…with a mortal…during my travels…but if you want to know more read my memoirs…” She hadn’t written them, it was on her to do list.

–

“How about I just read your journals…” He knew it would irritate her but he also knew that she would allow it. She could hardly refuse him.

–

“Pfft…it’s only fair…” She shrugged but she was clearly miffed. “You’ll read them just to get me back…so childish..” She wagged a disapproving finger at him. He would read them but not entirely for the sake of a little juvenile teasing.

–

https://wordpress.com/post/mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/11379

Writing Prompt #159 “Collage 23″ and Wordle #109

It starts with a whisper,
doodles and old records,
summers thin and self-righteous.
–
She blurs in crisis
a score of hierograms
spilling from the friction
of our bodies interspersed.
–
She kindles like a letter handwritten
side by side, perception immanent
we unlace our limestone thighs,
our sins purely contextual.
–
There’s a heart 3 inches deep
and wholly transparent
crouching in the fence
outside of your house.
Sometimes I look for you,
sometimes I simply wait.
–
They threw you to the clocks,
the weight of their expectations,
the weight of your sorrow
cutting me off like a dream.

Mag 308

A paranoid eclipse,
a lover once-removed
distance leads to obfuscation
to lies and apologies so subtle
they need not happen to warrant belief.
–
Love is a stowaway in a red mail box.
My lips blessing, beseeching, bestowing
charms for an unimpeded journey.
If I could I would crawl inside
but the words are too big for me.
–
I partake of you as faith
partakes of the incredulous
knowing that I shall never
be wholly satisfied,
knowing that if I were
to remake you
the iconography would not hold.
We are perfect precisely
because we are incomplete.
–
My heart could grow
no fonder for within you
are all the “ifs” I’ll ever need.

Suitor

The moon spars under a black tarp,

An abrasion of silver glinting

Like the chords of a severed chrysalis.

Who unzips you, fictitious sister?

Who exsanguinates your ripe heart

That each month you retreat

Behind a famished smile?

Is it either the favored sun

Or the red-faced warlord

Opposed by your sovereign?

*

I wrote several little poems yesterday on the bus. I will be pretty distracted the next two weeks. My national exam is coming up and well I have a lot going on at the moment.

Wordle 204

Brenda Warren

Sleep stolen for the sake

Of wild beginnings

I arranged dreams for him,

Sculpted the clay of my flesh,

Spoke in burning tongues

About a life not even glimpsed,

For the keys are never

Far enough removed

From my fingertips

To facilitate such miracles.

–

My only power is instigation.

I am not even a person

Four-cornered, punched through

Like a time card or an used ticket

I float insensate between the ears

Popping from the bottle

With a celebratory smack

Whenever dying permits.

–

In hindsight love was impossible

Because right from the start

I felt it necessary to invent.

For

Fairy Tale March 27th 2015, a new world

The journey began with a lecture, the way all utterly preposterous undertakings do. I will summarize that lecture rather than subject you to its entirety.

Destination: Arborea

Climate: Arctic

Description: mountain ranges exceeding in height any found on earth, dense forests with hearty frost-resistant vegetation, 3 moons, highly luminous sun fragments, purple-tinted sky, crystal clear lakes, abundant hot springs

Predators: Everything is larger in Arborea

Dominant Sentient Race: Nephilim

Since we came to visit the Nephilim it stands to reason that I should introduce you.

Physical Characteristics: Tall (7 ft average), brightly colored hair and eyes (more on the hair later), skin color variations comparable to those found in humans, small horn like projections around the eyebrows (males), wings, spots on the shoulders (females), horns (males, more on that later).

Hair Color: Hair color is often an indicator of magical persuasion

White- Weather (air/lightning)

Silver- Ice

Red- Fire/Lava

Blue- Water

Black- Necromancy, Dead Speak

Gold- Alchemy

Green- Earth/Druidic

Purple- Telekinesis, Psychokinesis, Binding

Orange- Magic Resistance, can turn body parts into weapons (mostly males)

Pink- Reanimation, Psychopompary (females)

Multi-colored- Can create pocket planes, travel through other dimensions, and can enter others dreams. If they have silver and pink they can remove things from the dream world (extremely rare)

*Females are more adept at magic.

Horn Size: The Nephilim hierarchy is determined by horn size (satyr, gazelle, ram) females don’t have horns and are thus exempt from the hierarchy. Only males with ram horns and females may assume governmental positions.

Race Life: The Nephilim live in small groups or tribes in the high mountains of Arborea They do not typically marry as they are polyamorous and rarely form close personal friendships among their own kind. The females only become sexually receptive once a year, as a result of this coupled with a high infant mortality rate the females often have large litters. The males are extremely virile, the more high-ranking a male the more females he may mate with during mating season. As part of the mating ritual they fight in fierce battles and participate in other extreme competitions of both strength and intellect to prove themselves.

For hunter gatherers, perhaps surprisingly, education is extremely important. University attendance is mandatory. They have huge lecture halls and massive libraries that rival those found anywhere else in the multiverse. As such it is not uncommon for scholars from other planes to visit. Travelers are welcome with great hospitality and open curiosity. The Nephilim do not even lock their doors lest a guest arrive when they are away (The Nephilim travel extensively). Their rugged landscape, high altitude, and abundant dangerous wildlife make if difficult for other races to survive in Arborea indefinitely and thus they have little competition and risk of invasion. Perhaps because of their high intelligence they do not make weapons of mass destruction, war is between leaders of different tribes, fighting has honor. Their only natural enemy is the The Watchers.

They are philosophical/spiritual but do not subscribe to organized religion. They live in accordance with nature.

Quiet a lengthy summary but the lecture proved difficult to condense in a meaningful way. Now onwards to the journey!

The journey began in a crystal cavern, which by all accounts is the origin of many a mysterious occurrence.

The Party

Name: Mokcyin

Race: Toroct

Position: Mage

Name: Set

Race: Xenos

Position: Familiar

Name: Shiuto

Race: Dragon

Position: Fighter/Comic Relief

Name: Yang

Race: Fenrick

Position: Opportunistic Merchant

And then of course there is me the lone human. As the official translator my utility was nullified on meeting Trias (a Nephilim and linguist we encountered early in our pilgrimage). If you have the misfortune of being born to the Prime Material Plane then you are probably not familiar with these races. Except dragons, everyone is familiar with dragons.

Mokcyin muttered some spell underneath his breath and the portal opened in what had been a nondescript sheet of rock. For those of you who are not familiar with dimensional travel, prepare to have your insides and outsides turned every which way. I threw up immediately on exiting the portal. I was, it turned out, fairly useless and cumbersome in many respects. Arborea is a place that defies description, though I have already done so at length (encase you’re wondering I had a special device in my nostrils that allowed me to utilize the thin air). It was terminally cold. In such temperatures a human female is subject to hypothermia, frost bite, and death (cryogenic stasis perhaps?). We needed shelter. For reasons beyond my comprehension living quarters had not been prearranged. Luckily the Nephilim are a hospitable race. Set transformed into a hawk and went to scout for lodgings. I spent the next 15 minutes engaged in a frantic jig. When he returned the hike began, it was an arduous one through rugged and unforgiving terrain. There was also some climbing involved but having lost consciousness the burden was not shared by me. When I woke we were in the cabin.

The interior walls were irregular and composed of the mountain itself, acclimation was minimal giving the space an almost cave-like appearance. The floor was likewise of stone but the texture was smooth and curiously warm. Sunlight spilled in from the ceiling, drenching the cavity in hazy golden filaments. There were still several hours of dayhaze left. A fireplace stood in the corner and from it hung a cauldron of simmering stew, the smell was otherwordly and mouth-watering. The main room was spacious and lined with wooden book shelves, all filled, all organized by specialty. In the center of the floor there were several large arm chairs made of hides pulled over bone, each laid with a soft blanket, they were facing each other. In the center of the ceiling there was a large ornate lantern (there were no visible cords as the apparatus was powered by magic). Against one wall was a wooden desk, with parchment, fine bone writing implements, and a smaller lantern which mirrored in many respects the overhead light (a facsimile of this light was in every room). In one corner of the room stood a chest, inside there were spices and dried meats. A round table with wooden chairs signified a dining area but there were only minimal cooking implements, plates, and eating utensils all of which were tucked away in a tall cabinet. Although there was a sink there was neither a refrigerator nor a stove. A refrigerator was unnecessary as perishables could be stored outdoors all year (in underground cellars). Food could be cooked at the hearth or as was customary outdoors directly after the hunt.

There were two corridors leading away from the main living area one lead to Kun-Jin’s sleeping quarters (the cabin was not, as it turned out, unoccupied), the other to the bathroom. The bedroom was spacious but contained only a bed and a wardrobe. The mattress lounged luxuriously inside of what looked like a hollowed out tortoise shell. The proportions of said carapace were enough to accommodate four human-sized males. The wardrobe was made of artistically carved wood of a deep purple hew same as all the wooden storage units. The only ornamentation was a set of gazelle-like horns nearly identical to those on Kun-Jin’s head. Nephilim shed their horns only once in their lifetime, a rite of passage and a sign of sexual maturation in males (the budding of wings signifies sexual maturation in females).

Although the house did contain a bathroom with running water it did not contain a bath or shower. Baths were taken outside in natural hotsprings. Bathing was a communal activity but as hot water was so plentiful in the mountains those of a more squeamish or antisocial disposition could still arrange for privacy.

You may be wondering at this point why I came to Arborea knowing that my human constitution was not significantly robust to endure the rugged polar climate. Well the truth is I came for the sake of my curiosity, which is a pitiful excuse but one more compelling than any other.

 

Our Host Kun-Jin (I made this using the Sims haha)

*

For

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/fairy-tale-march-27th-2015-a-new-world/

 

Mokcyin, Shiuto, and Yang are my friend’s characters but I am using their names here as I am currently writing a story with her about the Nephilim.

 

Photo Challenge #53, March 24, 2015

Caleb

I besmirch your immaculate parchment

The gossamer cloak that hides

All that is preposterous and prohibited

Within your insouciant grin.

There are secrets

I do not wish to tell

For the pleasure is in captivity,

In the specter and the elevation

Of divinity that enigma imposes.

 

Your tears are the ejaculate

Of an oppositional cosmology.

I would pour vinegar in your wounds

Rather than watch you spoil.

A stray hair admonished with a sweep,

A lip ripened in a coffin of teeth.

Consciousness flowers

From your promiscuous veins.

 

I’ll wake in the abdication of dreams

A thief with counterfeit claims

Unable to distinguish the numbers

On the clock in the ruin of twilight.

Where is my alveolus?

My glowing white core?

It is not me but the world

That is upside down.

*

For

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/photo-challenge-53-march-24-2015/

Attendance Mandatory

Love is not a ghost

That comes in the night

Unbidden to each threshold.

It does not assimilate

Within a vacuum

Within a box

On a doorstep by mistake.

If it entered accordingly

Would reason forgive

Its omissions?

The poor etiquette?

The stalker whose fantasy

Manifests only

In motionless portraits?

 

Love can be spontaneous

But it craves attendance.

A thought unaired

Does not a conversation lend.

Participation should never be

Underestimated

There is something to be said

For a man who extends

His hand, his heart,

The breath of his being

But there must be someone

Sentient to receive it.

An archetype

Is a bleak alternative

To authenticity.

*

I am not much of a photographer, I have very unsteady hands but I want to start using more of my own work. If you have art or photographs that you would like for me to feature with a poem please feel free to email me or comment. I will link your site.